Wednesday, 18 January 2017

Life returns to Mosul neighborhoods freed from IS

Life returns to Mosul neighborhoods freed from IS

On a street just off the main road leading to the last neighborhoods
in eastern Mosul still under "Islamic State" (IS) control, people throng
around produce-laden handcarts. Mortar rounds come crashing into the
area with alarming frequency, exploding with a sharp, dry bang. The
insurgents have made a habit of bombarding areas no longer under their
control and consider anyone who failed to retreat with them infidels
worthy of death. The shoppers pay no heed as they stock up at the
market. Fruit, vegetables, eggs and cooking gas feature prominently on
the shopping list: cheap essentials for the city's cash-strapped
inhabitants.
The Iraqi military launched its campaign to end
IS reign in Mosul on October 17, and the first troops entered the city
on the east bank of the Tigris early in November. Since then, the front
line has rolled through the eastern half of Mosul, exposing its
inhabitants to the fighting while pushing back the insurgents. Since the
start of the year, reinforcements and new tactics have quickened the
pace of the offensive, and a string of neighborhoods have been liberated in quick succession.
Among
them is Zuhour, where the street market sprang to life within days of
the liberation. As the government and international aid agencies have
failed to deliver sufficient supplies to the city, food, fuel and other
goods are brought in and sold by merchants. A supply chain leading from
the nearby Kurdish region right into the heart of the city was swiftly
created, reconnecting Mosul with the world outside IS influence after
over two years.

Zuhour is less than a kilometer from the frontline. Continue down the
main road a little longer, and concrete blast walls stop the traffic
from proceeding toward the Nineveh ruins, the remains of the Assyrian
King Sennacherib's capital, now a stretch of no man's land. Behind it
lies the ever-shrinking "Caliphate."
But this has not stopped the neighborhood from coming back to life.
Cars
drive on roads pockmarked with craters after earthen barricades and
blast walls have been hastily cleared. Already, bulldozers are filling
in holes punched into the tarmac by IS suicide car bombs or mines known
as improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Children play in front of
facades riddled with bullet holes and next to collapsed houses that are
all that is left of IS positions destroyed by airstrikes. Clean-shaven
men chat with their neighbors. Gone are the bushy beards that the terror
group forced them to grow.

Back to cigarettes and cellphones

Zuhour
is not the only neighborhood that's been rejuvenated. In Gogjali, the
first district to be retaken by the Iraqi military, a market has long
been selling goods to people coming from the liberated areas.
On an unpaved square next to the road, Mosul's inhabitants reacquaint
themselves with the small luxuries they were deprived of after IS
stormed the city in June 2014. Cartons of cigarettes are stacked high,
mobile phones and SIM cards are displayed on wooden boxes, and a
container has been fashioned into a rudimentary tea house where men sit
and smoke water pipes.
Smoking had been strictly prohibited by
the insurgents, who enforced a hard-line version of Islam, and phones
were confiscated to prevent information from leaking out of the city.
With IS now penned back at the river and unable to fire mortar rounds
into Gogjali, people are relaxed as they roam the market in search of a bargain.
Mosul's
economy had stalled under IS rule, and the city's many government
employees were deprived of their salaries. This has left inhabitants
with little money to spare.
"Life has returned back to normal.
But we received no salary under Daesh [the Arabic name for IS], and we
are still not receiving a salary now," said Ziad Ahmed, a 41-year-old
civil servant, as he carried his shopping from Gogjali to the adjacent
neighborhood of Al Quds.

The vendors also noted the lack of purchasing power.
"People
don't have a lot of money; they buy the cheap phones," said Jassem
Mohammed, who manned a stall selling mobiles, SIM cards and phone
credit.